


all twisted up in wire

by erintoknow



Series: Aria-Rough Drafts [2]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Drugs, Found Family, Gen, Murder, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Recovery, Run Away, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transitioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 18:29:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erintoknow/pseuds/erintoknow
Summary: Getting out of a bad homelife is never as simple as running away.





	1. you'll never get out

**Author's Note:**

> This is the OG version of several chapters of [[Your Weak Young Heart]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21702838/)

You’re not going back, you promised yourself on the bus.

You’re not going back, you promised yourself as you settled into the city.

You’re not _ever_ going back, you promised yourself after Chelsea sat with you in her apartment.

You’re going back, your body tells you as the shakes keep getting worse.

You thought you could do it. You really did. Withdrawal was just a body thing, and your body never meant that much to anyone, so what was the big deal? Once you ran out, just quit cold turkey. Easy. You hadn’t been ready for how it reached into you and demanded your attention. Derailed your thoughts, frayed your walls that kept everyone else from leaking in.

Shake your head, you’re not coming home late from work building yourself up to shouting down your wife. Grab your arm, it’s not you who just burned yourself on the stove while your daughter pulls at the hem of your dress, screaming. Keep them out. Keep them out. Keep them out. Out. Out. _Out_.

Fingers snap in front of your face. “Pay attention when I address you.” You jump with a start. It’s hard to remember he’s here, his mind blanked to you. Drugs. Not the ones you’re after, but it’s promising. The best reassurance you have that he’s who he says he is. “You missed two check-ins. Explain yourself.”

“…complications.” You lie, and leave it at that. Don’t look him in the face, don’t even look in his direction. The moment stretches between you, a string winding too tight. You flinch as the couple in the room two stories below start screaming at each other.

There’s a sigh, and then, “There’s going to be an extensive debriefing once this business is sorted. You had been highly recommended, but this? This kind of behavior is unacceptable.” He claps his hands together. “Fortunately we can still salvage this. I’ve got an important meeting next week, I _expect_ you to be there. Do you understand, Cuckoo?”

You nod your head. Keep your face blank as you stare ahead. Play the subservient role. You don’t need his thoughts to know what they expect by now. When did you realize they weren’t as smart as you had always been told? That they couldn’t actually peer inside your head like you could their’s?

It’s right now. When he leans in and stares right through you. Turns, waves a hand towards the door. “You’re dismissed.”

The thought you cling to among all the others hounding you as you leave: This man is an idiot.

———

Of all the possible meeting locations, this was the one you had explicitly recommended against. Lighting was poor, little room to maneuver, insufficient exits. If a fight was to break out, it’d be a disaster. If? When. _When_ the fighting starts.

You hated these old, abandoned parts of the city, run through with twisting greenery breaking down civilization, the eddies of trash that pile up in the cubby corners. How you always have to watch your step that you don’t poke yourself with a needle coated in who knows what. You miss seeing a clear blue sky.

As derelict buildings go, the police station was at least one of the buildings in better condition. Still had a roof even. The way cots and furniture were scattered through the rooms and hallways suggested it had taken on a different role prior to abandonment. Aftermath of The Big One?

Your handler for this mission is having you patrol the area while he sets himself up in the old police chief’s office. Patrol is easy: Climb up on the roof, sit down, listen. Keep your walkie handy. No gun of course. Part of you is curious if any were left behind when the station was abandoned. Unlikely.

Mercifully, he had at least given you enough of a dose to take the edge off your withdrawal. The nausea and headaches aren’t as intense. You can at least focus enough to keep your mind open, sort through the noise of human and animal life.

It’s after midnight when someone finally approaches. Thoughts guarded, but a skim of tension, suspicion. You can feel them thrust their hands in their pockets, fingers curling around something hard. Concealed weapon? Pistol? Impossible to tell just yet what make exactly. Armed, but not hostile yet. You report on the walkie, the contact is here.

Your handler acknowledges, instructs you to stay on watch for the second contact.

 _Second contact_? There’s only the two of you. This isn’t protocol. You sigh. Acknowledge. Hope the walkie doesn’t pick up your exasperation.

The man enters the building, you track his progress, the way he picks up a piece of masonry and juggles it in one hand, how it doesn’t quite obey gravity as he does so. A boost? You report the information to your handler. He reports back that he already knows.

The contact finds your handler in the chief’s office at the same time you pick up on what must be the second contact. The fact that they’re explicitly and loudly thinking about meeting him is the give away really. The person, woman? Obviously a go-fer. Open book but doesn’t know much. She’s armed too.

Of course. Everyone in this situation is armed but you. What else?

You report in on the second contact’s arrival. Your handler acknowledges and instructs you to stay on watch.

You stand up, flex your arms. You don’t like this. Something isn’t sitting right. Why is your handler the one meeting the contacts? That’s your skillset. You’re the expendable one. Why aren’t you being kept close at hand to serve as a bodyguard? Why aren’t you armed? Why were you sent alone, separately? Who are these contacts?

It’s one thing to be in trouble. They’ll reeducate you, wipe some records, and then it’s on to the next mission. You don’t want to think about what happens to you if your idiot handler gets themself killed. All the errant little thoughts pulling at your consciousness.

The first contact, the man, he wants something. Is pressing for it, doesn’t like he’s being kept waiting. The second contact is bee-lining to them. Here to observe? Report?

Feelings of hands on metal.

You clench your fists, breath in, breath out. Sing softly a rhyming song to calm your anxiety. Something that Command never cared about but that weird woman from the bus had picked up on within two times of meeting her. You’re supposed to stay on the roof.

You find the ladder, you climb back down.

You wish you had a weapon.

Stealth has never been your speciality – nerves. But tonight you have an advantage that all three are focused on each other, in a tiny room with one door and on window. The door isn’t fully shut. The woman, was last in. On purpose or amateur hour?

You can hear their voices, as you press yourself against the wall. The man is talking, an edge to his tone. “You told me last time you had evidence, and now you tell me there’s no papers, no video, no photographs. I need something actionable.”

“I’ve got something even better now–” Your handler talking.

“And what’s _she_ doing here?”

“Watch where you point that thing tough guy.” The woman speaking? She’s got a rasp to her voice that sounds painful.

“She’s here as part of the terms with my agreement–”

“Oh, so you’re working with _them_ now too?”

There’s a sound of a fist hitting a desk. You flinch. “I can’t very well depend on _you_ to protect me, now can I?!”

What?

Your handler continues, “Look, it’s keeping watch on the roof. I’ll call it down, and then that should be all the proof you need that I’m serious.”

He’s betraying the Special Directive.

_He’s betraying the Special Directive?_

The relief on his face when you first got in contact. The vague orders. The being sent ahead. The being sent alone. The violation of protocol.

You’re fucked.

When your walkie crackles, you have to scramble to muffle it. Hope they don’t hear you already in the hallway listening in. What are you going to do? Can’t just… run away. Where will you go? What will you do? You can’t escape your life, the drugs proved that. You whisper a strained acknowledgement into the walkie. If you had a team, you could restrain your handler and call in back-up. But in a he-said, he-said situation? No one is going to believe you. You’ll be labeled defective and broken down for parts. If you’re lucky.

After what seems an appropriate length of time you stand up straight, hug yourself. There’s no choice really. There never was. You walk through the door.

The man has his hood up, face shadowed in the dim light of your handler’s emergency lighting strips. He turns as you open the door. The woman stands to the side, hands on her hips, chewing something. Nicotine gum, you pick up. You flinch from their gazes. You don’t have a persona to fall back on for this, just you.

“This is him?” The man in the hood asks, “This is a just a kid.”

Your handler frowns. “You want them young enough to be trainable, but old enough you can still physically control them. Most don’t even make it this far.”

You stare at your handler. Why is he doing this? Why is this happening? “…sir?”

Your handler gestures at you, “Go ahead Cuckoo, roll up your sleeve.”

You look at the hooded man, the chewing woman. Both have their hands on something concealed. Metal, stone, both.

Don’t think, follow orders, that’s what you’re for. You slowly raise an arm, careful not to risk setting anyone off. Grab your sleeve, pull back, back, lines of orange, even in the dim light it’s like they glow. Garish against pale sun-starved skin.

The woman leans in, peering, then laughs, rocking back on her feet. “Damn! A real one! The boss was right.”

The man in the hood turns on her. “She _knows_ about _–?_ ”

“I had to tell her upfront to get protection.” Your handler cuts in.

“Goddamnit, you told her?” He pulls out the piece of masonry, which floats above his palm.

As he does, the woman draws her gun on him. Your handler grabs his own, not yet pointed at anyone, but he’s tense, ready.

You stand rooted to the spot, hand still on your sleeve, pulling it back.

The woman tsks. “Bad move.”

The man lowers his arm, the masonry dropping into his hand. “Fine. Hand over the Cuckoo to me, and let’s be done with this.”

The woman grins. “Sorry Sugar, the bird’s coming home with me.”

Your handler turns towards her, “What? That’s not part of the deal!”

The woman smiles, razor teeth. “Deal’s changed.”

Guns fire and you move. Parts of the floor shift and tremble, and you’re sent crashing to the ground. Everything is dust and chaos. You hear shouting. Your’s, their’s, somebody’s. Everything’s a tangled ball of panic and you can’t unspool where yours begins or the other’s end.

There’s a clattering of metal and a gun’s under your hand as you scramble back to your feet. You grab it, stagger backwards, find the wall. Check the chamber, check the safety. Wait for the dust to clear. Practice your breathing exercise. Who’s still here? Focus. Focus. Where’s the source of danger? Where’s your handler?

There. Up against the desk, dark stain on his front. Step through the rubble. There’s no more ceiling. Moonlight replacing the crappy emergency lighting strips. Your handler groans, still alive, brings a hand to his side. He’s in pain. It’s hard to feel sorry for him.

There’s a footstep, someone reaching out for your shoulder. The world slows down around you as training takes over from your panic. Spin on heel, stop with back foot, steady hand, breath out, squeeze, bang.

The man in the hood staggers backwards. Clutches his stomach. The ground beneath you starts to shake and then you squeeze the trigger again. Aim higher this time. He grunts, his pain and fear mingling with your own sense of self, a kind of mental backwash, as he collapses to the ground. You turn back to your handler, hands shaking. It’s obvious he’s dying. You don’t have the ability or tools to stem blood loss from a gut shot like that. You pat him down. A wallet, fake id, useless to you, some spare bills. No drugs. He doesn’t have them on him.

You’re screwed.

Your handler is as good as dead, and now you’re covered in his blood, and you still don’t even have anything to stem the withdrawal. You don’t even know what drug it is they keep you on. Is it just one, a combination? Some in-house special?

No where to go. No one to trust.

No. Not no one.

Chelsea. The nice woman from the bus. She’s not going to like it if you make a habit of showing up to her door coated in other people’s blood, but when have you ever had a choice?

Maybe you will now.

You can’t go back.


	2. Chickadee

When you wake up, you find a blanket draped over your shoulders. The sound of coffee brewing coming from the kitchenette. You freeze. Where are you? A couch, there’s a coffee table, a TV is playing some show. When did you fall asleep? The events of last night start to slowly trickle back to you in reverse order. Crying, shaking, showing up at Chelsea’s apartment, the two hour long walk in the dead of night, ducking shadows, avoiding curious minds.

The noise, the shouts, the blood, the gun in your hand.

Bang.

Bang.

A wave of nausea washes over you, and you want to believe it’s just the withdrawal.

As you shift up, you hear Chelsea call to you. “You want something to eat, chickadee?”

“What’s a chickadee?” You rub the sand out of your eyes. Hands shaking.

Chelsea sighs. “It’s a very tiny bird what lacks the sense God gave all her creatures to stay away from men.”

You get the sense she’s not talking about the bird.

“I tried to wash the blood out of your clothes, they’re drying on the shower door. Can’t say that’s a skillset I expected to need again when I moved here.”

Alarmed you glance down at yourself. The shirt your wearing isn’t the one you had on yesterday. Your heart lurches in your chest.

Chelsea approaches with two plates of pancakes, and sees the expression on your face. “Hey, hey it’s okay.”

“When did I–?” You pull at the shirt.

“You changed right before falling asleep? Spent forever in the bathroom.”

You relax a little at that, images coming back as she says it. You’re safe, for the immediate moment.

You realize you’ve got a grimace on your face and attempt to twist it into a smile, take a plate and plasticware Chelsea offers. “Th-thanks.”

Chelsea sits down on the couch next to you, her own plate in hand. “How are you feeling?”

The question seems to be sincere, and a million different possible answers run through your head. It takes a minute for you to settle on one, “Dizzy.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

You shrink into the couch. “No.”

“Okay.”

The television snaps away from the soap opera that had been playing to a man in a starched grey suite. Breaking news. Beloved pillar of community found dead. You tighten your grip on the fork in your hand. In the next apartment over someone curses out their child after stepping on a toy.

Chelsea frowns, and is that your anxiety or hers?. She snatches the remote from the coffee table and turns the tv off. “Maybe we’ve had enough of that kind of talk for awhile.”

You glance up at her, there’s some connection she’s made, but you don’t want to know what it is. You don’t want to know what she’s thinking. Don’t _need_ to know. Huh. Either you can trust her, or you can’t and in that case there’s nothing else you can do at this point. Realize you’ve been holding a plate of pancakes, and set it down on the coffee table to pick at it with your fork.

You can feel her looking at you, that she wants to ask you more about last night.

It’s nice, how she doesn’t ask. Just lets the two of you sit in silence. You push the pancake around on the plate, low-key nausea overriding any desire to eat you might have been able to muster up.

What do you do now? Are they more likely to find you if you stay put or if you try to run? What the hell even happened last night?

Wait.

The man you shot, your handler… what happened to the woman? Who was she? Is she still alive? What did she want you for?

Panic wells up inside you and you drop the fork and clutch yourself. There’s this awful noise and you realize it’s you. You’re retching and – hands at your shoulders, Chelsea pulls you into the bathroom and you collapse in front of the toilet, retching up what little you had eaten in a stream of stomach bile. Your vision is blurry and you can feel the acid burning in your nose as you fall back on your knees.

“Hey, here.” Fear and worry running through your head as you hand Alex –you flinch– as _Chelsea_ hands _you_ a washcloth to wipe your face with. She crouches down next to you, hand on your back. She’s done this before, too many times.

And you? You don’t know what to do. You _need_ somebody to tell you what to do. Why did you ever think you could do this? Just… You flinch as the woman in the next door apartment cuts herself chopping carrots.

“What have you been taking?” Chelsea asks, her voice low. A dozen possibilities running through her head. You can’t focus well enough to pick out any of them.

You rub your arm, “I– I don’t– I don’t know.” It’s as an honest answer as you can give.

“This… man,” Chelsea says the word with disdain, “the one that was supposed to be getting you more of… whatever it was, he didn’t say?”

“…no.” What did you tell her? You can’t remember.It’s a strain to focus in on her against the background buzz of chittering thoughts around you. But you need to know what she’s thinking, what you told her.You chase the the line and: the blood, the bruises– “No!” You shake your head, “It’s not like that!”

That gets a spike of alarm from Chelsea. “Honey, what are you talking about?”

“I’m not– they didn’t–“ You dig your fingernails into your legs. “It was just a– just a job.”

“A job.” She doesn’t believe you, even as she’s on the floor next to you, hand rubbing your back. She’s right not to, but you desperately wish she would.

“My– my, my, my partner, the guy who was going to uh, pay me–except… things went bad.”

“Alex… this is important, so please answer me.”

You tense up.

“Did someone… touch you last night?”

“No!”

“Okay…” Chelsea doesn’t relax. You already know the next question she’s going to ask. “Alex… did you… kill someone last night?”

You can’t trust yourself to talk, just nod. The blossoming lance of fear as the man crumpled to the ground shoots through you. You may not be rated for wetwork, still, it doesn’t usually affect you this badly. Is it the withdrawal? What’s you and what’s drugs? You’ve never thought about that before.

Chelsea sucks in her breath. “Okay. _Okay_.” She gets up and grabs you old clothes off the shower stall. “These are getting burned, then. You can keep my shirt, at least until you find something more your size. You didn’t have a gun with you when you got here, did you leave it there?”

“I… I can’t remember.”

There’s a pained sigh from Chelsea. “I won’t sugar-coat it, Alex. I’m pretty fucking pissed to be dragged into this. But like hell am I going to throw a homeless kid back out on the street, or–“ She throws up her arms, “–I don’t know, turn her over to the goon squad this city calls a police force.” Under her breath she mutters the word ‘pigs’ like it’s an epithet.

“Why are you–?”

“Would it be easier to understand if I make it selfish?” She doesn’t wait for you to answer, you can feel her own nervous energy fill the room. “Maybe I’m just wishing someone had done the same for me?” There’s a bitter laugh, “Or _maybe_ just fuck the government. Should have known I’d be too gay to go straight. Look, you can stay with me awhile, I’d rather keep a close eye on your withdrawal. Maybe I can dig up a doc off-the-books who’ll look at you.”

“I can’t–”

There’s running water and then a paper cup being handed to you as she pulls you up. “Com’on, chickadee, rinse your mouth out and clean yourself up. I’m going to see if I’ve got any ginger ale left.”

It turns out there is.

It turns out you need _a lot_ of ginger ale over the next few months.

You’re not sure when you started getting better. Just that, one day, you wake up on the couch and you can tune out the background thoughts again. If anything, it feels easier to do then before this all happened. Wrap one of the songs from Chelsea’s tape collection around your head, and you can feel more yourself then you might ever have in your life. You know you ought to split ways with Chelsea, that hanging around her place so much is dangerous, for both of you. But she keeps finding new things you could do to help her out. Fixing appliances, furniture, running errands. You don’t mind, you owe her.

Also, you have to admit, sleeping on a couch is better than a subway station or an abandoned house.

Sometimes the craving gets it’s hooks back in you, prying you apart again. It’s Chelsea’s idea to try transferring the desire to something harmless, like candy. It’s not a perfect solution, but it lets you feel less powerless. Sometimes, when you’re lucky, the sheer mechanical action of unwrapping a bar or opening a bag is enough to trick your brain into settling down.

There’s a lot of little behaviors you start adopting in order to feel more in control. Shaving every morning, and not just face but arms, legs, whatever you feel like that day. One evening you shoplift some makeup and nail polish and pressure Chelsea to show you the basics. This is _your_ body. It answers to _you_ , not the other way around, and you’ll do what you want with it.

As far as you can tell, no one ever comes snooping around. No one comes to try and take you back. It turns out the Marshal of the Rangers, the government sponsored team of heroes for the city died the same night. That, you have to imagine, must be taking priority over some random shooting out in the abandoned slum.

Sometimes you have nightmares that the Marshal _is_ the man you shot, but that’s all they are, nightmares. What would someone that important be doing there? There’s no way you could have hurt someone that powerful. It’s not possible. It can’t be. Still, you keep the thought to yourself.

The hope that you might really truly be free this time is its own kind of frightening. Keeping a steady job is a challenge with no paperwork and an allergy to cameras and recording equipment, but you’ve at least been able to do enough to keep from being a drain on Chelsea.

Lately, when you haven’t been running errands, you’ve been messing with a bass guitar you ‘rescued’ from the trash, trying to get it working again. Not that you have a speaker to test it with. It’s mostly cover for practicing your voice. No one in the park thinks twice about the weird hippie kid struggling to hit the high notes.

And then there’s the _other_ project. One you’ve been reluctant to talk to Chelsea about. You have to address it eventually though, and today feels as good a day as any.

Chelsea’s job has odd hours, but this evening she’s home right at six on the dot. You’re still not sure what her job is. It’s something she has mixed feelings about, you know that much, and she won’t discuss it with you. After everything that’s happened, respecting her privacy seems like the literal least you could do.

She plops down on the other end of the couch from you, a bottle of beer in her hand. You eye it. “What’s that?”

“The cheapest beer in Los Diablos.”

“…can I try it?”

“How are old are you, chickadee?”

You have to think about that one. “…twenty-one?”

A small smirk, “Uh-huh. sure,” she says, not buying it. She then hands the bottle over to you anyway. “You won’t like it.”

She’s right. You sputter as soon as it touches your mouth and hand the bottle back to her. “Ugh! That’s gross.”

She raises the bottle, “That’s the idea,” she says before taking a long drink. She winces and shakes her head when done. “Probably put rats in it or something.”

You pick up your own glass from the table. You’ll stick with soda. After a sip to wash the beer out of your mouth, you decide to test the water. “Um, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you…” You stare at your glass, watching Chelsea from the corner of your eye.

“What’s up?” She turns to focus her attention on you, mind a frustrating blank. She’s been getting better at that lately, and you haven’t figured out how to ask if she knows you’re a telepath without giving away the game.

“Did you hear about fight at the Glendale street market?”

“Yeah, some k-“ Chelsea stops and narrows her eyes, staring your down. “That was you, wasn’t it.”

“Yeah.”

“You seriously knocked out a dude with armored skin?”

“Y-yeah.”

Chelsea shoulders’ sag as she sighs. “You’re killing me smalls.”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t you be keeping a low profile?”

You blanche, “It’s been ages. And– and–” You run a finger over your thigh, tracing patterns. “I can’t just… stand by when something like that happens.”

“God.” Chelsea looks away from you, you don’t need to read her mind to know she’s upset with you.

“I’ve been saving up money, I’ve got this whole design planned out for a skinsuit and I–”

“Sweetheart, I admire your desire to step up, even after everything you’ve been through. That’s something truly amazing.” Chelsea turns back to look at you and you feel yourself wither under the intensity of it. “But there are plenty of less reckless and frankly, less stupid, things you could do that would be just as worthwhile.”

You exhale, inhale, exhale again. It’s not like you haven’t thought about it. A mask means you don’t have to prove your identity, don’t have to worry about your face getting back to the directive. Maybe even, and this seems like a long shot, but if you got famous enough, or associated with someone famous, like the Rangers, that in itself could protect you? You’re intimately aware with how much easier it is to make nobodies disappear.

Plus, and this scares you a little to think about. As long as you were approaching it on your terms, fighting was fun. A fast-action puzzle game of finding the right move and out-thinking your opponent. Each time you succeeded the nightmare felt a little less insurmountable.

You can’t say that though, can’t speak it aloud. Instead you say,“you’re the one that kept encouraging me to find something to do with my life.”

“Because I didn’t want you freeloading around my apartment forever.” Chelsea fires back. That’s pretty much a lie and you both know it. “Look, I’m not your mother, you can make your own decisions.”

You dig your nails into your leg. “I’m sorry. I feel like I need to do this.” This is your way out. Your chance to be real person, to prove your worth to them on your own terms. To… make up for whatever is you may or may not have done.

Chelsea sighs and drains the rest of her beer. “Just… be careful, okay, Chickadee?”

“Y-yeah. Of course.” You lie.


End file.
